Saturday, August 27, 2005

Today my "Murphy's Law Waiter Boy" told me a story about his friend in the army. One day, they were riding in their tank through a dangerous Arab area where "most people would not want to go," and a very young child started running towards their tank holding out a teddy bear.

The friend, 18 years old, shot the child dead.

When they went out to inspect the child, they found explosives in the teddy bear that the child had been instructed to throw under the tank in a "suicide mission." The friend had saved himself and 7 soldiers.

The friend left the army soon after that because he was starting to go insane. Before the teddy bear shoot-out, he was standing next to another soldier who got shot in the head, and miraculously came out alive but with a mutilated face.

"Yes," my "waiter-friend" says, "I have met him a few times. That's the sad part. Everyone feels bad for the child who was shot, or the children who throw rocks. They should feel bad for the soldier."

"I think I'd rather have the guns with rubber bullets than be the children throwing rocks," I tell him.

"No," he says. "Because the soldiers have to be there, in a place where they don't want to be, doing what they don't want to do. The children are free, they can throw rocks and go home to sleep or play when they get bored."

No, he's never shot anybody, he says. But he becomes a giddy little boy as he tells me he can hit a balloon 700 meters away.

posted by iliza @ 4:31 PM

1 Comments:

At 11:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

some things this soldier left out in his story:

he was in occupied territory, taking part of a military regime. What does that mean? he was enforcing an undemocratic regime that was controlling all aspects of people's lives.

resistance to occupation is almost inevitable (NOT justified) in such a situation. can attacking soldiers (something I consider immoral) be compared to dropping a one ton bomb on civilian neighborhoods? you've got 3-4 times as many palestinians dead than israelis for a good reason.

The little kid, may come back to is home to sleep at night. but so can the soldier. Once he's released from the army, he's gonna travel to NYC, or thailand, or south america, while that little boy will grow up for the rest of his disenfranchised life in a jail called gaza strip, or the occupied territories in the west bank.

Who would u prefer to be?

-Asaf

 

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